Blog Description

This is a blog for the family and friends of Collin Park. He will be serving a two year mission in the Sierra Leone Freetown Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he left on January 24, 2013. While Collin is on his mission his Mom will be posting pictures and letters as she gets them, the content will be straight from Collin (unless otherwise noted) - spelling and punctuation will be corrected of course! Commentary and clarification may be added by his Mom as needed.UPDATE: Collin's mission was split in half! The Sierra Leone Mission included the country of Liberia when Collin first left. As of July 1, 2013, the mission was split along the border and the new mission created: the Liberia, Monrovia Mission. Collin will never see the country of Sierra Leone. He has been in Monrovia Liberia since he left the MTC in Ghana.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Because of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Liberia and Sierra Leone Missions were evacuated on August 4, 2014 and missionaries were reassigned to different missions. Collin was reassigned to the Salt Lake City Central Mission.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

January 20, 2015

He didn’t write a letter today, he confirmed some of the details
for tomorrow, he wants to go to the
temple and to Café Rio! We can do that!

He did write:

i woke up this morning and it was just weird...

I get picked up at 2 to go to the office, and then I don't know what happens.

I'm getting off!! See you tomorrow!

He did include a couple of pictures of Kameron on her baptism day from a couple weeks ago.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

January 13, 2015

Well this week wasn’t so good. Not a whole to write about.

We are working with a Less Active Family, the Lavae's. They are so fun, we always have really good conversations with them. The son, the only son in the family, is awesome, he was in my last area and always joins in. Since Elder Farnsworth got to this area, he's been here for 3 transfers now, they haven’t been to church, but on Sunday, they came to church! The amount of excitement Elder Farnwsorth and I had was through the roof. We were so happy!

In SLC the smog is terrible. There are some nights I think I’m going to die. Most days I couldn’t even see the mountains it’s that bad. So to avoid having lung cancer, we are walking! I missed walking ever since I got here. I’m so happy to be doing it again.

Yesterday sucked.... it was a good ol' Washington type day. It was just raining, and yes we were still walking. We talked to a couple people but they weren’t too fond of talking to the missionaries.. it was interesting.

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

January 6. 2014

New years as a missionary is not very exciting. I forgot how it was from last year. Last year I actually woke up and heard people celebrating it, but that’s only because I was awake, because I was sweating to death in my bunk bed with a net over me in Gardnersville. Here in SLC, nothing. I was dead to the world and never woke up that night. I went to bed at 10:30, and didn’t really move till 6:30 the next morning.

This week we had a baptism for Kameron Hamm!!! It was great. A lot of her extended family came from southern Utah and Nevada, a lot of them were not members of the church, and it was awesome, it put a little bit of pressure on me since I was in charge of time filling while my companion was changing. This is sometimes very interesting, you never know who is going to be there. So this time I just talked about the reason behind us missionaries always inviting people to be baptized, even with people being baptized prior in a different church. So I focused on how Christ walked to the Jordan River to John the Baptist. I talked about how John the Baptist had the Priesthood and if we are not baptized by the Priesthood, Heaven Father won’t and can’t recognize it. When we are baptized by the Priesthood, it is recorded in heaven. As any other missionary would do, I tied that back to how the Priesthood was lost and then Restored a long time later by the Prophet Joseph Smith. I felt like I did a decent job and I was hoping I answered some questions for some of the non members that were there.

Elder Farnsworth baptized Kameron, but she asked me to confirm her on Sunday. I definitely love being able to do that. I was thinking about it after the confirmation, I helped her gain one of the best gifts on earth which allowed her to be on the strait and narrow path toward heaven. I played a huge part in her life. It sunk in that I have done that for a lot of people and it was shocking, being as missionary is the best and it’s coming close to the end...

I hope that everyone is having a great 2015 and is sticking to their goals!!

Elder Collin Park is serving a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He will be teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in Sierre Leone and Liberia (West Africa) from January 2013 until January 2015.